I have carefully read my Archos ClipperÔÇÖs multilingual pamphlet but cannot find an answer to the question:

In what order and by what criteria are tracks sequentially played, or manually incremented using the next/previous buttons?

I've tried renaming filenames to form an alphabetical order. I've also tried preceding each track name with a zero-padded track number. However, in neither of the player's normal / shuttle modes can I create any playback order that proceeds in any recognizable pattern.

Mine plays in exactly the order that it appears in my Mac laptop listing, unless I accidentally hit the random switch on the clipper. I believe that is in alphabetic order of filename. Thank goodness the clipper doesn't use that idiotic tag convention to order things - that's why I bought it.

Keep in mind that it's extremely easy to accidentally put the clipper in random order mode. I forget the details, but turning it off tends to put it in random mode unless you take advantage of an undocumented property that was posted here in reply to me. That is, you hold the button down to turn it off for a really, really long time and it will then pass thru the random mode without activating it.

Mine plays in exactly the order that it appears in my Mac laptop listing, unless I accidentally hit the random switch on the clipper. I believe that is in alphabetic order of filename. Thank goodness the clipper doesn't use that idiotic tag convention to order things - that's why I bought it.

On the basis that you have your Mac file listing sorting alphabetically on the filename it certainly is suggesting that that's how the Clipper sorts things; however, mine doesn't play in alphabetic sequence in the sequential mode, let alone the random mode!

Perhaps I have misunderstood the 'Normal' and 'Shuffle' modes. Perhaps 'Normal' is random and 'Shuffle is similar by a different algorithm/seed.

viking wrote:

Keep in mind that it's extremely easy to accidentally put the clipper in random order mode. I forget the details, but turning it off tends to put it in random mode unless you take advantage of an undocumented property that was posted here in reply to me. That is, you hold the button down to turn it off for a really, really long time and it will then pass thru the random mode without activating it.

Mine has got to be playing aphanumeric order - I use it mainly for audiobooks and should have noticed if the chapters came in the wrong order. Firmware writers are so abusive to audiobook listeners, to whom sequence is sacred and skipping to the next or previous (multi hour) audio file too easily can be a disaster that takes ages to recover from.